


Promise

by bearonthecouch



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Angst, Back burning, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Medicinal Drug Use, Secret Santa, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:21:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21934408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearonthecouch/pseuds/bearonthecouch
Summary: “I can’t do this,” he whispers. But he’d promised.
Relationships: Riza Hawkeye & Roy Mustang, Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang
Comments: 8
Kudos: 79





	Promise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jade_Kyo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jade_Kyo/gifts).



“Bite down on this,” Roy says, placing a thick leather belt into Riza’s hand. She meets his eyes, and Roy can easily read the fear in them. “I don’t have to do this,” he tells her, pleading. _Don’t make me do this._

“You promised,” Riza insists. 

Roy draws in a ragged breath and knows that she is right. His broken promise in Ishval is the reason they are here. He can't break another promise to Riza. He won't. 

He closes his eyes and snaps his fingers, and flame leaps into being. He takes another breath and opens his eyes once more. He lets his eyes rove over the familiar lines and symbols and tightly scrawled Latin script that cover Riza’s back. The blood-red ink seems to glow in the reflection of the flickering flame. 

He doesn't bother asking Riza if she's ready. She’s slipped the belt into her mouth and he can hear her fast and shallow breathing. She is terrified, and he almost refuses, again, to do what she’d asked him. But he forces himself to block out what he is doing, to block out especially the fact that it's _Riza._

Every time he’d done this in Ishval, he’d choked and vomited, sometimes directly onto the floor in the corner of the torture chamber they’d forced him into. Just thinking about that makes him start to disassociate, makes it nearly impossible to catch his breath, makes the room seem to spin around him until he can’t see anything but the little flame hovering above his hand. He focuses on that, watches the fire flicker and dance. Once, in Ishval, he’d touched the flame to his own skin, the sensitive flesh on the inside of his arm, just to feel the truth of the pain he was inflicting on others, over and over again. He hadn’t been able to stick it out very long, had pulled away after only a handful of seconds, but he still has the scar. Neither Maes nor Riza had ever asked about it, nor had the military doctor he was forced to see upon his return from Ishval. From the looks on their faces, he’s sure all three of them had their suspicions as to its origin.

He swears he can feel the scar lighting up on his skin. He presses that left hand down flat on the sheetless mattress where Riza lays on her stomach, waiting for him to gather up the balls to do what he had sworn he’d do. She is biting down hard on the leather between her teeth. She is ready, and Roy wants nothing more than to get this over with if there is no way of getting out of it. 

He tries to stop his shaking, tries to stop the spinning enough to make the safest choices possible. He can do this with a minimal amount of damage, if he tries. He has to be able to. He bites his lip and starts with the upper left portion of the circle, where the most dangerous symbols and coded equations lie. He touches the flame to Riza’s flesh, watches it spread and melt her skin into a bubbling mess as she spasms and writhes in an attempt to get away from the pain. He hadn’t wanted to restrain her (it reminded him too much of the chains and cuffs holding the captive Ishvalans), but now he was glad that she’d insisted on it. It prevented her from moving too much, rolling over or otherwise making this already terrible situation even worse. He holds her down with his free hand, pressing down firmly on her lower back and concentrating on the feel of her smooth bare skin under his touch, rather than on the overwhelmingly sickening scent of burning human flesh. He can’t do this. He’s gagging and choking and he douses the flame and stares down at Riza’s mutilated back as he hears her gasping and whimpering through clenched teeth. She is soaked with sweat. Roy knows that the pain she’s feeling qualifies as torture, knows because he’d lit his own arm up in the ungodly heat of the desert, knows because he’d tortured so many Ishvalans that he can’t even count them, following orders like a good soldier, like an obedient dog. 

“I can’t do this,” he whispers. But he’d promised. 

He tells himself that he’s past the worst of it. There are only two or three more small portions he has to burn out. But the pain will only increase as he continues, unless it gets to the point where Riza goes numb or passes out. He honestly hopes for that to happen, but Riza has a ridiculously high pain tolerance, which he knows from watching her get shot during the war. 

_I can’t do this_ , he thinks, but he sparks a new flame and presses it to the lower right arc of the circle, where it intersects the darker line the width of a finger that encapsulates more coded Latin text. Roy doesn’t even read Latin, but he has these words memorized. Even as he burns them away along with the layers of Riza’s skin, he knows he won’t ever forget the poetry inscribed under his fingers. He won’t ever forget Riza’s sporadic breaths and the tears in her eyes and the way her hands clench into tight fists, and he wants so badly to soothe her, but how can he, when he’s the one causing her pain?

“I’m sorry,” he breathes, so softly that he isn’t at all sure Riza can hear him. He isn’t sure he wants her to. How pathetic is an apology against the torture of flames consuming something as fragile as a human being? How meaningless is an apology when this was her idea in the first place?  
  
He moves his hand up to the last spot, and is the flame a little bit hotter this time? He just wants to get this done, wants to stop Riza’s suffering, wants it all to be over so he can breathe again. He snaps out the fire and then forces himself to look, to really _make sure,_ that he has done as Riza asked, and removed the possibility of anyone ever again using her body as a road map to the unique destructive power of flame alchemy. Roy knows that Riza believes flame alchemy can only create monsters. Why the hell she still trusts him, he has no idea.  
  
He runs his fingers through her sweaty hair and hopes she can understand the comfort he’s trying to offer. She moans, and she is shivering, going into shock, and this is the dangerous time. He’d tried to tell her that this could kill her (he has seen it happen so, so many times), and even if the burns themselves aren’t deadly, there is still the risk of infection.  
  
Roy gently pulls the leather belt out of Riza’s mouth, and her dazed and glassy eyes meet his dark ones. “Stay with me,” he begs her, because he cannot for even a second allow for the possibility of her death at his hands. “Stay with me, Ri. Please.”  
  
She slips in and out of consciousness, but before she passes out completely he manages to coax her into swallowing a handful of painkillers and antibiotics he’d stolen from the army hospital, where the officers in charge of those medications looked the other way because he was a war hero. 

Roy unbinds Riza and retreats into the tiny bathroom. He vomits up the contents of his stomach and refuses to go back into the other room where the horrifying smell still lingers. He leans his head against the cold porcelain toilet seat and forces himself to take slow, deep breaths. He sits on the yellow-tiled floor for what feels like hours, until he can hear Riza stirring. He gets carefully to his feet and makes his way to her bed. “Ri?”

“‘M’okay,” she mumbles. Roy nods. Her sweat has dried to her skin and her burn wounds are harsh and angry. Roy winces at the sight.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, despite his earlier reservations.

“Not your fault,” Riza insists. 

Hawkeye is the most stubborn person that Roy has ever met, but he almost overrides her insistence on no hospitals. But how could they explain this? Does it matter? She’s in need of medical care, and he’s no doctor.

“Ri…” he starts, but her feverish glare burns into him, and he bites his tongue. He sits down next to her and watches the rise and fall of her breathing. It’s still not as steady as he would like. She’s obviously in pain. He reaches for the pill bottle he’d left on the bedside table and offers her a couple of painkillers. She almost shakes her head, but she can see the plea in his eyes and she acquiesces. After she’s swallowed the medicine, Roy runs his fingers through her hair and leans over to kiss her temple.  
  
Riza’s eyes close, and she exhales almost calmly. “Thank you,” she whispers. Her voice is rough, but the gratitude is genuine. Roy squeezes her hand. He doesn’t say ‘You’re welcome.’ Instead, what he says is, “I’m right here.”


End file.
